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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28323063">the writing's on the wall.</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/shariling/pseuds/shariling'>shariling</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Creatures &amp; Monsters, F/M, hunter jyn, wolf cassian</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:13:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,313</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28323063</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/shariling/pseuds/shariling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s nothing personal, Jyn tells herself, loading her crossbow as she aims it towards the wolf, hunched over a quickly exterminated cow. It’s just business, just money. She doesn't have to feel guilty if she keeps her head down.</p><p>Or: Jyn is a hunter, and Cassian is a werewolf.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Cassian Andor/Jyn Erso</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the writing's on the wall.</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The full moon is always a beacon of trouble. Jyn has learned this the way that everyone does — experience and stories, ones told to girls before they’re tucked in at night, about the undead wandering free, unchecked by the Lady Lune, how has to let her looneys out <i>once</i> every once in awhile.</p><p>Jyn’s just stacked the odds against a pile of wolf bodies, turning human in the sunlight. Trouble, yeah.</p><p>Devilishly as ease, Jyn checks her watch as 10 p.m. strikes, reflecting on the trouble at hand. A farmer hired her — a wolfman’s been eating his cows every full moon for the past three, and he’s running out of stock. Clearing the mess every month has taken more money out of his pocket, and Jyn tangentially remarks that they have a messy eater on their hands. <i>Not really, </i>the farmer responds. <i>I’m just a bit of a neat freak.</i> </p><p>His boots were suspiciously manure clean, fingernails white and perfect. Jyn nods. Old dog, then. A harder hunt. </p><p>The farm’s  adjacent to a cemetery, which is all backdropped by a thick of woods. It’s where she’d plan an attack if she was a wolf, and so she goes further down the block— an old fashioned diner sitting transcendently in a vaguely neon glow, while she waits. Luckily, the coffee is complete garbage and sits untouched on the table she dines at, so she doesn’t have much in terms of a distraction. Except — </p><p>“You the hunter ole farmer Kenth hired?” asks a waitress, some sweet thing with a gap tooth and pigtails and too much blush. Jyn looks to her, and back to the woods, before she nods. The girl lights up. </p><p>“I thought so! Was yer crossbow that gave it away.” Jyn looks beside her where ole faithful sits, and notes the level of the girl’s observational skills. “Though, Pa always says hunters usually travel’n groups. You know, workin’ their odds?”</p><p>“We’re spread a little thin at the moment, actually,” Jyn says, her smile tight but not unkind. The girl lights up anew, with a gasp. </p><p>“Your <i>accent</i>!” she exclaims. “Oh that’s the most beautiful thing I ever heard. Don’t get much of that out here — just get stinky dogs eatin’ the cattle.”</p><p>“My father used to say wolves were beautiful, actually.”</p><p>“Psh, he probably never had them murderin’ his livestock.” She inclines her head, curiously. “He a hunter like you?”</p><p>“No,” Jyn lets out a heavy breath, lifting the corner of her mouth in feigned nonchalance. “He’s somewhere like what’s down the street.”</p><p>“A farmer?”</p><p>Jyn snorts. </p><p>“No. Across the street.”</p><p>“Ohhh, an undertaker!”</p><p>“Dead.”</p><p>“Oh,” she deflates, clearly not expecting the dive in the conversation. That’s fine — the sooner she’s gone, the better. “Well … they bury him someplace? Maybe he’s a ghost. You know, nana ended up buried in that cemetery down thata way — “</p><p>“There wasn’t a body.”</p><p>“— and we love nana, don’t get me wrong, but dang if we don’t kinda hope someone else’ll die soon and knock her ghost to the great hill. She’s been the guardian goin’ on five years, and I tell ya, she does a god awful job of it. Whole place has been in shambles and subject to all sortsa mystical goings ons like that dog o’yours. Bet she coulda stopped it, but she’s too busy knitting incorporeal sweaters, or somethin’. Anyway —”</p><p>“Wait.” Jyn’s brows knit, eyes squinting above the girl’s head and through the (surprisingly well kept) glass of a long window. There’s a rustling in the trees just past the cemetery, as vague as a breeze of wind if it wasn’t exactly what Jyn was looking for. She stands, collects her things with a brief pat down — pistols at her spine, check, crossbow on her back, check, oversized and deeply under utilized machete under her jacket, check. Waitress delights, at the apparent nothingness she saw, but the trained look of a killer in Jyn’s eyes holds a world of enthusiasm for her. </p><p>“You gon’ put the doggy down?” Jyn slaps down a twenty for the coffee she hasn’t drunk, and turns away, rolling her eyes annoyedly as she makes towards the door. “I wanna be a hunter just like you, when I’m old enough!”</p><p>Jyn cringes. Turns back to her with a shake of her head, an apparent look of distaste on her expression. </p><p>“Stay in school. Please.”</p><p>The door opens and closes with a jingle overhead, and Jyn puts on her game face. The rustling is subtle enough but constant, a whirring in the same spot, back and forth. Pacing, considering the kill. Likewise, Jyn holds her ground, waiting for the creature to emerge. When it does, she frowns. Four thick legs holding together a tall, but lean wolf, peppery brown with a black overcoat. <i>Four</i> legs. They hadn’t mentioned anything about that — they’re faster on four, harder to catch. Most wolves prefer a two foot stance as something familiar to their human side, but strategically, four makes the most sense. She would’ve prepared her bike if she knew.</p><p>Nothing to be done about it now. She waits. When the wolf jumps into motion, so does she. </p><p>It’s a silent approach, her boot clad footsteps dragging her up and towards the wooden fence of the farm. The wolf leapt over it with an expected grace, agile and swift. It is <i>just</i> her luck to get stuck with a wolf who actually knows what they’re doing — makes the job more difficult. Well. She can’t get mad at someone adapting, learning how to survive. As hunters get more skilled so do the wolves, so do the rest of all the creatures wreaking havoc in the world.</p><p>It’s nothing personal, Jyn tells herself, loading her crossbow as she aims it towards the wolf, hunched over a quickly exterminated cow. It’s just business, just money. She doesn't have to feel guilty if she keeps her head down.</p><p>Except maybe she does, because once the bolt leaps out of her bow the wolf jerks out of the way, apparently having sensed her. The bolt instead lands itself into the cow corpse, and she’s brought face to face with a snarling wolf, the fur around its muzzle dripping in blood in thick, heavy plops. She’s used to killing behind the back, where you don’t have to watch the life drain out. Like this — it’s strange. Has she ever looked a wolf in its eyes, before? Clever, intelligent looking things. Eyes like copper, conducting a thought from sight to mind, before its claws dig into the soft dirt below.</p><p>“<i>Shit</i>, damnit —”</p><p>It leaps, over her head. A mistake, she thinks, as her hand swiftly grabs the machete at her side and swings it up, slicing the wolf on its front left paw. It lets out a pitiful whimper as the blow lands, and this Jyn is more used to — the pain, the mercy in killing something you’ve already hurt. Not a weird understanding shared in a glance between woman and wolf, like they both know they’re just keening into their natural state. Murders each, in different ways. Killing for instinct and killing for money. </p><p>The wolf runs, handicapped by a limp, and Jyn pursues.  </p><p>Blood makes him easy to track, and the wound makes him slower. Jyn chases him ( he’s a he now, is he? ) towards the forest behind the cemetery, where she hears an old woman’s ghostly voice say <i>off my lawn!</i> before Jyn leaps past the back gate and into the woods. He’ll have the advantage, but she’s not the best wolf hunter in America for no reason. Steadily jogging further into the thick of it, Jyn catches eyes with a glowing, yellow pair hidden somewhere deep in front of her. Luring her? She knots her brows, lifting her crossbow. She could take a shot in the dark, where she’d seen him lurking, but —</p><p>She doesn’t. Maybe a good hunter would’ve, but a good hunter had seen his eyes above a dead cow, and had just seen a hungry man eating a hamburger looking back at her, so. She’s been made bad. She knows what hunger feels like. </p><p>It’s not like she gets paid to care about wolves. But she’s got a mouth to feed too, her own, and it’s a dog eat dog world out there. She doesn’t hate the canines of the world — she just benefits from someone else seeing them as vermin, to be exterminated. Jyn doesn’t need to think about the man beneath the fur, what he looks like in the daylight, if he has a family. If his friends know he’s a wolf, or if they’ll find out when his name gets scratches off Jyn’s kill list.</p><p>If it is a lure, Jyn takes the bait. Advancing, she listens for the heavy breaths of a wounded animal before her, soft rustling in the brush of the forest calling her forth. Bolt set, but she doesn’t fire, as if curious about what’s going to happen. Like she has to find out, like she hasn’t learned one hundred times over that curiosity only ever leads to pain. Doesn’t she know by now, to keep her chin down and her head clear, to pull the trigger when it’s asked of her, to cash her checks and not worry about the blood money she uses to buy bullets and silver tipped arrows? </p><p>When the ground gives out beneath her, she’s almost expecting it. The dog leads her forward, and if she took the time to memorize a geographical landscape of the town, she’d know she’s at the edge of a cliff, and the ground giving way beneath her is a sign that she’s stepped a little too far off the beaten path. She hears the scurry of the wolf beside her, having tricked her out past the point of no return. Jyn is the one who snarls.</p><p>“Mother<i>fuck</i> —” she calls out once she starts going down. Fuck the eyes, she turns on her fall and fires her bow.</p><p>Missed. Saw would say that’s an earned end for a terrible job poorly done, and Jyn isn’t going to spend her last thoughts arguing with the ghost of him in her head. No — she’s going to find the wolf and make eye contact, and make him watch as he kills her. He won’t feel especially bad. She would’ve killed him too, probably, if he’d made it easier for her. Instead, she looks towards an empty forest and in the last few seconds she has, she closes her eyes, and thinks of her father. </p><p><i>Are you disappointed, papa?</i> she thinks. <i>Stardust will go back to dust, and we will be together again.</i></p><p>She feels him before she sees him. There’s this pain in her shoulder, furious and blinding and all encompassing enough to scare her out of childhood daydreams with Galen Erso, in a  memory that feels too far away to still belong to her. Her eyes snap open, and the wolf has her by the shoulder, his mouth large enough to bite her down to the top of her breast. </p><p>Right. She interrupted his meal, he’s still hungry. </p><p>The effort it’d take to fight him is something she didn’t think she’d have, with werewolf venom coursing her system. Nevertheless, she punches at the wolf holding her above the chasm, landing a blow beneath his jaw, at his throat. The wolf grunts, bothered like a mosquito bit his hide. Jyn huffs a laugh, of all things, slamming into him again.</p><p>“Eat, get your fill,” she hisses it, delirious with pain. “I’d do the same, puppy. Go ahead.”</p><p>When has a wolf under a full moon ever known restraint? It’s like slitting a vein in front of a vampire — ferality takes hold over your better instincts. She’d be ripped apart in seconds. </p><p>Except the werewolf backs up off the cliff, slow and careful, eventually dropping Jyn into a heap on the forest’s floor. The confusion only settles in once the wolf is scattering away, leaving Jyn, bleeding and turning at the edge of the woods. She wails, then, humorless in the face of her apparent <i>not</i> death.</p><p>“You’ve killed me anyway!” She screams. Shakes her head. Maybe that’s what he wants — her death at the hands of her own, what the hunters would do to someone who turned on the job. Although how does he have the mind to <i>think</i> of justice, under the blinding glare of the moon herself?</p><p>After a breath, she stands. Defeated, the hunter walks back from where she came, following her own tracks in the trees to find her way back to the cemetery. </p><p>“Oh dearie,” says grandma ghost, as Jyn limps past, gushing blood. “Nasty bite, ain’t it?”</p><p>—</p><p>“Have any red candles?”</p><p>So there’s not <i>nothing</i> to do. Jyn can make an antidote, if she has spit from the werewolf that bit her — unlikely to obtain, but barring that, she can slow down the spread of the disease using some old witch’s spells that Saw taught her. The waitress from earlier stares at her, probably observing the oozing wound on her shoulder and where it’s dripping on her freshly cleaned floors, at Jyn and her dirty, bloody face, and pissed off expression.</p><p>“Uh … no,” she knots her brows, shaking her head. Her belief in hunters is clearly shattered, and Jyn can’t help but think <i>good</i>. “Mothma’s general store up the street might have somethin’. You’ll hafta go in the mornin’ though, it closes at night.”</p><p>“Right.”</p><p>“Wait!” she shouts when Jyn turns to leave. She turns back, and the girl worries her lip between her teeth, frowning. “Has to be red, huh?”</p><p>“Yep.”</p><p>“White won’t do it?”</p><p>“No, it has to be red.”</p><p>“What about red spray paint?”</p><p>Jyn tilts her head, thinking. Spells aren’t nearly as meticulous as people think. Flexing the muscles in her mouth, she gives a nod.</p><p>“That could work.”</p><p>Waitress brightens, her gap tooth like a bit of sunshine in the cold of a bleak night.</p><p>—</p><p>The rest of the ingredients are easy enough to gather up — dried oregano from the diner’s pantry, a bucket of freshly split pig’s blood ( or, in this case, cow ) gathered up from the failure on the farm. Jyn grabs a stick of chalk form her hunter’s bag back at her truck, and within the hour she has a circle set up in the diner’s parking lot, Waitress ( or as she’s learned in the hour, <i>Mara</i> ) watching her patiently as she lights each of five undried and red painted candles, chanting old Latin under her breath. </p><p>“What’s the spell all about?” Jyn has learned to find her talkativeness endearing, mostly if not entirely because she managed to save her life. Dripping pig blood over each flame lights up a green ploom — good for healing. </p><p>“I’m asking the moon for her help,” Jyn says once she’s finished the candles, taking her chalk and drawing out figures beside each. Saw would criticize her poor penmanship, but calligraphy was never her strong suit. “Wolves are stronger under the full moon, but so is everything else. Even you.”</p><p>“Me?”</p><p>“Yep. Let’s just hope she’s not too busy to help me out, here.”</p><p>Chalk work finished, she pockets the nub and sits herself in the centermost point, untouched by her lettering. The chalk lights up in white light, which she takes as a good sign, taking the oregano from her pocket and stuffing it into her open wounds with little reaction save for a catch in her breath. Then, it’s the final ingredient in a healing spell — a zippo. </p><p>“Alright, Lady,” she calls out, huffing a breath. Her utility jacket gets tugged off her shoulders and tossed aside, unveiling the bite mark seeped into her sink beneath a dark tank top. Even in the mystical glow of lit candles, it looks god awful, the skin torn and budded up where the teeth sunk into her, and even <i>then</i>. The blood is darker than it should be, like tar. Despite the garishness of its appearance, and the obvious pain coursing in her system, there’s something almost … pleasant, about the burn. If strength were a drug injected in her veins, pumping through her like adrenaline. Sparking the lighter, Jyn barely flinches as she brings it to her wound. “I need to live for 24 hours, after that I’m yours. Deal?”</p><p>Setting her jaw, she takes a breath before pressing the fire to the bite. It lights up, as if burning from the inside out — flames licking out from every tooth wound. Jyn screams, feels her arm burning and burnt, before it settles. Cauterized, she falls to her knees, every candle blowing out in one great puff of breath from the moon or from Jyn, it’s hard to tell. </p><p>“Thanks,” she croaks. Mara comes to her side, pulling her into the diner.</p><p>—</p><p>The next day brings her to Mothma’s Surplus Store. Bandages around her shoulder, blood stained on her clothes and still crusted on her upper lip. There’s a payphone outside and across the street, stark in the barren wasteland of an underused highway. At it, Jyn holds the phone to her ear, but doesn’t dial anything. </p><p>Fear? Could be. She should report into the guild and at the very least say the mission was a failure — or, following the rules, that she’s been bitten and she’ll be taking herself out for the betterment of the world. That’s what they’d want her to say, at least. In reality Jyn’s been running from things for far longer than anyone has any idea. Those are her two choices — running or death. The guild won’t stand for another wolf on the run, and Jyn won’t stand to just keel over and die. </p><p>Werewolves aren’t all bad, anyway. Some of them are smart, like the one from last night. When she turns, she could be safe.</p><p>They aren't all good either, though. There’s a reason why people hate them so much — not all of them prey on the livestock made and bred for humans. Some of them can’t fight their instinct, they hurt people. Some of them do it for the joy of the sport. Their kinds vary across the species the way that humans do, and most people don’t want to admit that fragile similarity, but it’s true. The only difference between man and wolf, is that one’s a wolf and one’s a man.</p><p>Frustrated, she slams the phone on the receiver, rubbing her hand across her face. She knows how to kill a wolf in a thousand different ways, she can do it if she senses herself losing control. She won’t hurt anyone. </p><p>Even she knows that’s naivety, but suicide isn’t terribly appealing, either. First thing on her agenda is getting the fuck out of this rundown town, before the farmer has a thought to track her back to the failed killing, or worse call the guild on her behalf. Huffily, she stomps to her truck, sitting down in the front seat with a hiss of pain. She almost missed it. </p><p>A vial on the hood of her truck, stark against the rusted paint. Something clear inside, viscous. Stepping out warily, Jyn looks to all sides of her for the culprit, before she picks it up, rolling it over in her hands. </p><p><i>Puppy Spit</i>, says a label on its neck, in scrawled handwriting that rivals the terror of her own. </p><p>She looks again, for any sign of a dog on her trail. But he’d be human now, and almost perfectly blended in, and even then the street is barren, except for a tumbleweed mocking her in a loose roll. </p><p>Stubbornly, she stomps back to the payphone, vial clutched in hand. Her fingers move on their own accord and before she has time to breathe someone answers the phone.</p><p>“Saw,” she says, before he can speak. “I got bit. I need a spell.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this is loosely based of the book gil's all fright diner by a lee martinez, which i don't actually recommend checking out if you're triggered by underage stuff, but a lot of the concepts in it are really funny and enjoyable - it's not a carbon copy, but it is definitely influenced by it. also i wrote this for my friend eli, who's a furry. more 2 follow!</p><p>comment if you liked it!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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